london

Fellow travelers,
I’ve taken a couple months off from this blog to do some important work with people who desperately want or need to take a trip, but have been frozen in place by their own travel fears. I would not call this work “counseling,” but more like exercises in empowerment with anxious travelers who personally sought me out for help.

I worked for several weeks with Tom, a 30-year-old lab technician from Mill Valley (just north of San Francisco) who has taken three trips to London in the past four years only to sit in his hotel room almost every day while his girlfriend went sightseeing. The only time Tom left his room was to go to the petrol station mini mart across the street for a bite to eat. He didn’t want to eat at the restaurant hotel because he was worried about food poisoning. He didn’t want to ride the Tube because he was worried about germs. He was afraid to dart into the local tourist information centre because he feared the operators were in constant contact with foreigners, and carried nasty viruses. On the third trip to London, Tom and his girlfriend, Katie, just missed their flight home because Tom spent an hour sanitizing his hotel room before check-out in order to protect the next guests from his own germs. “I kid you not,” Tom says. Needless to say, his relationship ended with his girlfriend.

Today, Tom emailed me from Auckland, New Zealand. He’s been out on the beach for six hours and coming to terms with his travel fears. London was too much for him to jump into, he says; too many people, too many cramped spaces, too many stimuli that inspired his fears about viruses and hygiene to take on an irrational life of their own. Auckland was the perfect place for him to take that one large, important step forward. He has the vacation time saved up at work to come back to Auckland and try something he’s always wanted to do: a sailing trip in a small island chain of the South Pacific. And he is certainly happy at the idea of being able to eat what he catches, without anyone else touching it.

Tom, it was a privilege to work with you, and I wish you all the best on your upcoming sailing adventure. I’m so glad you feel free at last of your worst travel anxieties. London will be there. And don’t forget… there are some great sailing opportunities down the Thames.

As many of us can attest to, dozens of modern international airports are like mini-cities, complete with malls, chapels, huge kid’s play areas, two-story food plazas, and sometimes even golf courses and movie theaters. As travel services have evolved into an art, more and more airports have focused on offering the weary, anxious, or downright cranky traveler the chance to de-stress — to the point that some of us might even forget we’re in an airport. Spas? Art galleries? Gardens? They’re in many of the world’s largest and most popular hubs — maybe even in the one you call your own.

You don’t have to belong to an airline’s VIP club to access most of these relaxing amenities; you just have to find the right terminal. So, if you have a choice of where to spend a long layover on your next trip, I offer these observations about some of the best airports out there where you can settle your frazzled nerves instead of dreading the next bout of altitude. I’m sure you can think of a few other airports where you wouldn’t mind killing some time at all.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia

Rainforest

Reflexology and massage center

Narita International Airport, Tokyo

Silence room

Reflexology center

Oxygen bar

Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates

Two indoor Zen gardens, located on either end of the concourse

San Francisco International Airport

Yoga room

Library

Aquarium

Art galleries

Schiphol International, Amsterdam

Library

Museum

(No offense to Schiphol, but besides the library and museum, this has to be one of the noisiest, most hectic airports on earth… and this is after they ditched the one-terminal concept!)

Five themed gardens, one of them home to more than a thousand butterflies

Free calf-massage stations

Designated napping facilities

Vancouver International Airport

Sleep pods, complete with noise-canceling earphones

I can think of some airports I’d put on a different list for being the loudest, most irritating, panic attack-inducing places on earth, but alas, one of the best ways to manage stress is to keep things positive. So, I’ll leave you with this image — wherever you may be right now.

Too bad more of us don’t find laying over in Tallinn, Estonia convenient. The international airport, Lennart Meri Tallinn, has passenger relaxation at every gate down to an art.

As many of us can attest to, dozens of modern international airports are like mini-cities, complete with malls, chapels, huge kid’s play areas, two-story food plazas, and sometimes even golf courses and movie theaters. As travel services have evolved into an art, more and more airports have focused on offering the weary, anxious, or downright cranky traveler the chance to de-stress — to the point that some of us might even forget we’re in an airport. Spas? Art galleries? Gardens? They’re in many of the world’s largest and most popular hubs — maybe even in the one you call your own.

You don’t have to belong to an airline’s VIP club to access most of these relaxing amenities; you just have to find the right terminal. So, if you have a choice of where to spend a long layover on your next trip, I offer these observations about some of the best airports out there where you can settle your frazzled nerves instead of dreading the next bout of altitude. I’m sure you can think of a few other airports where you wouldn’t mind killing some time at all.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia

Rainforest

Reflexology and massage center

Narita International Airport, Tokyo

Silence room

Reflexology center

Oxygen bar

Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates

Two indoor Zen gardens, located on either end of the concourse

San Francisco International Airport

Yoga room

Library

Aquarium

Art galleries

Schiphol International, Amsterdam

Library

Museum

(No offense to Schiphol, but besides the library and museum, this has to be one of the noisiest, most hectic airports on earth… and this is after they ditched the one-terminal concept!)

Five themed gardens, one of them home to more than a thousand butterflies

Free calf-massage stations

Designated napping facilities

Vancouver International Airport

Sleep pods, complete with noise-canceling earphones

I can think of some airports I’d put on a different list for being the loudest, most irritating, panic attack-inducing places on earth, but alas, one of the best ways to manage stress is to keep things positive. So, I’ll leave you with this image — wherever you may be right now.

Too bad more of us don’t find laying over in Tallinn, Estonia convenient. The international airport, Lennart Meri Tallinn, has passenger relaxation at every gate down to an art.

It’s August. I don’t need to know it’s high-travel season; I read your blog entries written from around the world every day. If you’re not on a trip right now, then you just got back from somewhere, or you’re ready to go abroad, or you’re thinking about it. This is the time of year when many of us most want and need a vacation. Summer is running out; students go back to school soon; the dreary months of the year seem depressingly near. Many of us wait until August to take our summer vacation because we had too much to do at home in June and July. We’re relieved to finally, finally be on our way. Then the State Department issues a travel alert… for the entire month of August. Do they call it a terror alert? No, they call it a travel alert. That makes us feel so much better, right? And yet do we sit on our passports and let the doubt and fear creep into our minds? From what I can tell, the answer is definitely no.

The anticipated targets are just vague enough, and just specific enough, to be infuriating. The embassies are closed across the Middle East and North Africa. But I’m not in the Middle East, you answer. Should I stay the heck away from the embassies in all the most popular European capitals because they might be threatened too? Well, we don’t know. It would be a “good idea.” It might be a good idea, too, if you weren’t on top of the Eiffel Tower at 3 pm on a beautiful afternoon. Or aboard The Eye in London the next evening. Or somewhere else insanely popular at an insanely popular time. The point is, there are lots of ways to minimize that thing we call personal risk. Personal risk is about reducing the chance that you’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And what does it really add up to? Does something either happen or not, and we’re along for the ride either way?

The questions really is, does a travel alert actually change our behavior? I’ve talked to tourists who won’t take a direct flight across the United States because they believe there will be a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. They will lay over in Toronto on a flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and then tell me how much safer they feel when they land. I’ve talked to other people who won’t stay in any kind of large chain hotel overseas because they think that an independent or locally-owned hotel won’t be targeted. I’ve been on board a flight from Paris to London that was running three hours late, and the people next to me didn’t complain once because they would rather sit on the tarmac all night rather than deal with the stress of riding through the oft-threatened Chunnel.

Personally, the travel alert isn’t going to change my plans to fly into Istanbul next month. The fact that Turkey isn’t on the Middle East and North African “danger list” hasn’t inspired me to keep my plans. I just don’t think anything’s going to happen to me. I trust my instincts, my common sense. I trust in my vigilance to notice my surroundings, to know when something’s “wrong,” and to be a small part of preventing a tragedy. Is this arrogant? Yes, I think so. It distracts me from the idea that I believe in my own luck to save me from a serious incident abroad. Am I alone in believing this? No, I don’t think so.

Most of us will use the travel alert to reduce our personal risk. We might choose to travel “smaller,” travel more quietly. We’ll travel “smarter,” whatever that means, and keep an eye out. The more cautious among us will stay the hell out of and off “popular” destinations and routes, and go to bed thinking about how there’s no strategy for luck. The more brazen among us will feel more relaxed and invigorated after 2,000 miles on a Eurail pass without seeing a single nervous-looking security guard. That’s 2,000 more miles without incident… ha! And we’ll keep going, and going, and going.

If nothing happens this month, then we’ll all feel lucky, and we’ll love traveling (and in one sentimental figurative embrace, the world) even more than we do now. If something does happen, then we’ll rage over it, we’ll adjust, we’ll wait, and head right back out. With a more watchful eye this time.

When I was in Russia in late June, I didn’t say anything to anyone about the two unattended bags below the Olympic countdown clock. Now, I would. Would it make me feel any safer?